New technologies are continually emerging, enabling new types of content to be delivered over mobile networks for use with mobile terminals. The success of Short Message Service (SMS) fueled further developments such as Enhanced Messaging Service (EMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), and other communications protocols which allow the transmission of more than merely textual content. These and other new technologies allow for a variety of different types of content to be communicated to and from mobile (and landline) devices, including ringing tones, icons, Java games, video clips, software tools, etc.
For the delivery of digital content to be beneficial for all parties concerned, solid methods for managing the use of the content needs to be in place. To ensure business profitability, content providers' copyrights need to be protected to provide an incentive for such providers to continue developing and publishing digital content. Content retailers include, for example, operator portals, various media companies, entrepreneurs. On the other hand, convenience in finding, using, and paying for the digital content is of great importance to the terminal users.
The natural tendency for peer-to-peer sharing of messages, jokes, etc. is evidenced by the popularity and success of SMS. Great content will spread like good rumor, and content that people might otherwise never come across suddenly gets shared among communities of people with similar interests. One aspect of the present invention involves exploiting this phenomenon by facilitating the transfer of content to and from mobile terminals, and between mobile terminals, while restricting the mobile users' ability to fully use/control the content unless authorized to do so (e.g., by purchasing the content). Where content is transferred from user to user between wireless (and/or landline) terminals, this concept is referred to herein as superdistribution. With superdistribution, the content consumers themselves become the advertisers and distributors of the content. However, superdistribution represents a risk in terms of protecting against illegal copying. The future service architecture must ensure that whenever content is consumed in such a fashion, the authors and distributors of the content can be properly paid. This is vital to avoid losing revenue through content “pirating.”
One manner of protecting the content in such a superdistribution environment is to make such content available only on special-purpose client devices. For example, a special wireless device can be specially designed and adapted to transfer content to/from other similar special wireless devices, and the devices themselves can be designed to securely communicate with one another and ensure proper payment. Where protected content can be used only on such special-purpose client devices, enforcing DRM rules is relatively straightforward.
However, the consuming public is not, for the most part, looking to increase the number of wireless devices that must be carried with them. Rather, what is appealing to terminal users is the ability to do more with their existing general-purpose devices, such as personal communicators (e.g., wireless telephone), personal digital assistants (PDA), etc. Thus, the use of special purpose devices will not be very effective in the proliferation of the content, as most people want to use their general purpose devices to play protected content rather than a special purpose device.
General purpose device operating systems are not configured to handle this type of content transfer, and thus the enforcement of DRM rules in general-purpose device environments is not currently available. Further, it is desirable that the operating systems associated with general purpose devices require relatively few modifications, in order to minimize further operating system complexity and to allow multiple operating systems to be adapted appropriately.
Accordingly, there is a need in the communications industry for a system and method for augmenting operating systems operable in general purpose terminals to allow for the transfer of content while enforcing DRM rules. A further need exists for a system and methodology that allows such DRM rule enforcement during the rendering of content on the general purpose terminals. The present invention fulfills these and other needs, and offers other advantages over the prior art.